Struggling to lose weight

I'm a male, 5'10", 52 yrs of age.  I work out with free weights fairly agressively for about 30 min., and then do aerobics for 30 min., 5 days a week.  I burn around 600 - 700 calories at the gym alone.  My calories are around 1500 - 1700 a day.  And yet, I'm having trouble loosing weight.  I'm in good health, no high blood pressure, no high colesterol, I take vitamins, etc.  I weight 213.8 lbs as of yesterday, and just can't get it down to 200 lbs.  I just bounce between 212- 215.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong.  Any advice?

Thirty minutes of weight training is around 150 on the burn meter.  Depending upon your cardio, you are probably burning another 150-200 max.  I question your burn of 600-700 each day.  If calories are truly within 1500-1700 (including everything you drink) you would have a loss. 

Suggestions....turn your burn meter to sedentary and log in your activity each day.  Bump up your water to half your body weight, or try to get it there.  Log every morsel and every drop.  Spread your meals out thruout the day so that you are munching every 2-3 hrs.  Mix up your cardio...dont do the same thing every day....one day elliptical, one day treadmill etc.

See if that doesnt cause that scale to move for you. 

Glad to hear you are in good health.  Wahoo for that.  Keep up the motivation and watch that number move on the scale!

Also, you're not eating enough calories.  At 212 - 215 lbs and the exercise you're donig, you're probably burning around 2500 to 2800 calories a day.  So you have a deficit over 1000 calories which is too large.

 Okay, I'll try your suggestions.  Thank you.  As for calories burned, I'm going by what the cario machine tells me - I burn about 500 calories on the Arch Machine in 30 minutes.  I'm really workin' it.  And I lift pretty heavy for 30 minutes through various routines.  Calorie count tells me I'm burning around 600 - 700 calories total.  I'll try the water intake, etc.  Thanks again.

How much water are you drinking? Water is a great cleanser and should be your only liquid. Make sure your calories aren't coming from drinks (especially diet drinks). Also may want to change up your routine by trying a class at the gym like cycling, yoga or pilates. Hope this helps and good luck! :)

Yeah, I'd have to say that my water intake isn't the greatest.  I really struggle with getting all the water I need.  I don't drink pop, or alchohol, just a couple of coffee's a day and "some" water.  But everyone seems to me mentioning the water - soooo - guess I should take the hint.  Thanks.

Weight lifting isn't a high calorie burning activity.  It's important to do and helps your body burn more in the long run, but I probably would be hesitatnt to even count that on the calorie counter.  If you start with cardio and then go into weights (maybe you are I'm not sure) that would burn more calories than the other way around because now you have your heart rate up for muscle building and you're keeping your metabolism sustained for that much longer.

Hum...I'll have to look into that suggestion.  I was always told that you do the weight training first, and then you do cardio, because the cardio burns the fat off.  But that if you do cardio first the muscle doesn't have the fuel left to build off of.  Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't understand the process completely yet.

I wouldn't put too much trust into the amount of calories the machines tell you you're burning, either! I used to go for an hour and it would say I burned 800 cal on the arc trainer for that hour. When I finally got my heart rate monitor, it told me I burned 430!! I'm going to assume the calculations with my HRM are correct!  But I'd think you weren't eating enough calories, either. I'm a female, 34, 5'6", 125 and maintain at 1600-ish cals a day. If I exercise, I usually eat 2000-2200. Good luck!!!

Ohhhh - thanks for that bit of advice about the HRM.  I've kind of wondered how accurate those machines are as well.  I'll keep that in mind

No expert on this by any means, but my programme also suggests your order of things- weight training followed by cardio. The main reason though, is that if you do the cardio first you're usually too tired to be able to maintain proper form on the weight exercises. I don't think that it should matter if your heart rate is up or not before you go into weight training. It drops within less than a minute once you go to a slower activity, so its not that the elevated heart rate would remain with you through the rest of the exercise period. When I have on my heart rate monitor my heart rate fluctuates between 110's to 130's during free weight sessions depending on what the exercise is. Its obviously not as high as intense cardio, but actually you burn more efficiently when its staggered.

What type of exercises are you doing in the weight training? You burn more if you do a complex exercise than if you do one that involves a single movement. For example, you would burn more from doing a side lunge with bicep curl than if you do just a normal bicep curl. Really I'm just a pretender on this . I don't know enough theory to explain it. So really my best advice to you would be to get a personal trainer who can guide you through or get DVDs/programmes that follow that philosophy of strength training and incorporate them into your routine. My programme is jillianmicaels.com, which I saw a 10 pound per month loss with until the last couple of months (that's due to self-sabotage and not the programme itself), so I highly recommend her circuit training or her DVDs. I think Bob Harper's stuff is similar, and the P90X system seems to come very highly recommended.

The minimum calories that a guy should be consuming is 1600, so as others said you are probably under-eating. Water should be 1 oz for every 2 pounds body weight. Jillian says that when you don't drink enough water the body holds onto what is there rather than eliminiating it, because it interprets it as drought. Therefore drinking more not only hydrates you for better exercise and overall performance, but it should also decrease water weight caused by that phenonenon.

Hope all goes well

Sharon

thank you so much for your comprehensive and excellent advice.  I will take it into advice, and I appreciate it.  It all makes great sense to me.

Original Post by sbeverly:

 Water should be 1 oz for every 2 pounds body weight.

I'm having trouble believing this part.  If I weigh 260 - which I did when I started this diet, and I haven't lost that much yet so I'm going to use that number for convenience - I'd have to drink 130 oz of water.  That's over 16 8oz glasses of water a day.  Drinking more than 16 oz of water at a time (even only 16 oz sometimes) makes me feel extremely unwell. I get a headache, feel lightheaded, and feel sick to my stomach. 

Drinking 8 16 oz glasses a day would leave me seriously waterlogged, and curled up in a ball on the couch, if not throwing up.  I do drink around 4 glasses a day - I don't think I could double that.

Wow, Corella40 - you make a great point.  I guess I didn't stop to do the calculations, but you're right.  So, at 215 lbs., I'd have to drink 17 oz. of water.  No, that doesn't seem too reasonable to me either.  I can barely get in 8 oz. myself, as I'm in the bathroom every 5 minutes.

Hey guys:

You made me laugh I must say. You are correct. At my current weight I drink 13.5 glasses of water a day. When I first started doing it I felt HORRIBLE. I literally felt like if I was drowning. However, I did double-check it. When I went on the internet and searched for the water calculators and did it, it actually suggested that I drink more. I never upped it though, because it pointed out that some of the water can be taken from food. Then about 2 weeks ago somebody showed me an email that had the same formula, and it was from an independent source.

What I can say is that when my body became accustomed to it, I would feel thirsty if I didn't have that amount. What I generally do is aim for 8 glasses of water on days that I am not working out, and 13.5 glasses on the days that I do workout. On the latter days I drink 8 glasses over the course of the work day, and I can easily consume the rest before/during/after an intense workout. You do definitely go to the toilet alot- I can't argue with that one.

Hope all goes well.

Sharon